Bid to block children being bullied by mobile

MOBILE phone operators cannot be expected to meet the full cost of protecting children from abusive and inappropriate calls and text messages, an Oireachtas committee was told.

Director of the Irish Cellular Industry Association Tommy McCabe said: “If it is a societal problem, I think the overall cost has to come from the exchequer.”

In the current climate maintaining jobs was the priority issue for any company, Mr McCabe told members of the Joint Committee of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources.

His comments came at the end of the committee’s meeting with four mobile phone operators who outlined what they were doing to protect children from phone abuse.

Just one operator – O2 – has introduced a service called BlockIT to combat bullying on mobile phones, which is free of charge but, while it blocks unwanted text, pictures and video messages it cannot block voice calls.

Another phone operator – 3 – will introduce a service called Kidsafe next month that is also free of charge but is capable of blocking voice calls as well as text messages.

Vodafone said it hoped to launch a simple, configurable blocking tool free of charge early in the new school year while Meteor said it had a budget and a set of criteria for a similar service and was seeking tenders.

Meteor official Gareth Davis said the reason they were behind the posse was that they wanted to ensure they had the best possible product that would provide the maximum protection.

He said it was impossible for Meteor to take a service like Kidsafe and apply it to their network because the technologies were completely different.

Fine Gael’s Simon Coveney said he could not accept that parents could not go into a mobile phone shop and buy a phone for their children that they could control.

“I suspect, if I am cynical that is because it would result in reduced revenue for the industry in terms of texts and mobile phone calls,” he said.

Vodafone’s head of network services, Eamon Farrell, said that they had spent “several millions” in Ireland dealing with child protection issues from a purely corporate social responsibility. Mr Farrell also pointed out that anti-bullying legislation in Norway had significantly reduced the problem of mobile phone abuse in schools.

Mr Coveney pointed out that just four children in a primary school he visited recently did not have mobile phones.

He said it found it a “bit patronising” for the industry to say they did not want to usurp the role of parents or be regarded as oppressive by teens.

“There are lots of parents out there who want to make decisions for their children and they should be given the tools to do that,” he said.

“I want parents to be able to go into a shop – it does not matter whether is 3, Meteor, Vodafone or O2 and be able to choose a mobile phone that they can control for their children.”

Fianna Fáil Senator Jim Walsh said the situation in Norway should be brought to the attention of the Joint Committee on Education and Science.

Committee vice chairman Peter Kelly said it was intended to invite the mobile operators to appear before the committee at a later date to outline progress.